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Beyoncé at the 2021 Grammy Awards
Photo: Kevin Winters/Getty Images
Beyoncé makes mistakes too.
This has become apparent in the past few days, when the extremely successful and influential pop singer announced that she would be deleting a passage of text that had been interpreted as derogatory from her new album »Renaissance«.
The American musician is not the first to decide to edit an already published song line that was perceived as discriminatory.
It's happened a few times in pop.
Not just recently.
Lizzo - »Grrrls«
The word, which should no longer appear in variations in Beyoncé's song "Heated", caused discussions in June: "spaz".
A derogatory expression for people with disabilities, which in German can also mean something like "to be raging" or "to turn off".
At that time, the American musician Lizzo used the term in her song »Grrrls«.
One Twitter user pointed out that it meant "not freaky or crazy."
'It's an ableist swear word.
It's 2022. Make it better.«
Lizzo apologized and announced a new version of the song.
The criticized passage now reads: »Hold me back« (»Hold me back«).
Drake feat.
J Cole - »Jodeci Freestyle«
Canadian R&B star Drake found himself in a situation similar to that of Beyoncé and Lizzo a few years ago, back then with colleague J. Cole: In their 2013 track »Jodeci Freestyle«, the US rapper used the words » autistic, retarded” in combination as part of a diss, after which he was accused of feeding negative stereotypes about people with autism.
Both musicians apologized on their blogs.
"People with autism have brilliant and creative minds," Drake wrote.
J. Cole and he are of the opinion "that it is the right, responsible and respectful decision to remove the lyrics from the song".
So blogged, so happened: The lines are missing on a compilation of songs by Drake released in 2019.
Taylor Swift - »Picture to Burn«
In the noughties, another hugely successful contemporary pop singer, Taylor Swift, released the song "Picture to Burn," inspired by an ex-boyfriend.
Critics identified a homophobic line in it.
Addressing the apparently heterosexual ex, she sings: "You're gay" ("You're gay").
In 2011, Swift said in an interview that she would put it differently now.
For example, the »gay« passage in the music video was replaced with harmless lines.
Black Eyed Peas - "Let's Get It Started"
The US pop group's hit actually had a different name.
"Let's Get Retarded."
A call that can mean getting stoned.
At the same time, »retarded« is an insult to people with disabilities.
The song appeared as "Let's Get Retarded" on the 2003 album "Elephunk".
The fact that it became "Let's Get It Started" may have less to do with moral considerations than with commercial considerations: in 2004, the lyrics were re-written when the Black Eyed Peas set about performing the song as part of the NBA -To accommodate playoffs on American television.
Michael Jackson - "They Don't Care About Us"
One of the King of Pop's 1990s hits earned him accusations of anti-Semitism.
"Jew me, sue me," he originally sang on "They Don't Care About Us" off his 1995 album HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I.
Lines that, translated into German, could be interpreted as »Do it the Jewish way, sue me« – in which codes of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory are reminiscent.
He also sang: »Kick me, kike me«.
In American, "kike" is a derogatory term for a Jew.
Jackson initially reacted defensively: It wasn't anti-Semitic because he wasn't a racist.
But then he apologized and announced: "I'll go into the studio next week and change that." In a music video, for example, the passages were covered with sound effects.